PSX Extreme

Site Stats

John Carmack: PS3 And 360 Are "Far From Being Tapped Out"

Many gamers and developers were anxious to start a new generation, but one iconic designer says we actually could've waited.

During a recent Wired interview, John Carmack, id Software co-founder and partly responsible for the legendary Doom and Quake franchises, said the current-gen consoles still had plenty of juice left.

"...there’s so much you can still do on the previous console generation. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are far from tapped out in terms of what a developer could do with them, but the whole world’s gonna move over towards next-gen and high-end PCs and all these other things. Part of me still frets a little bit about that, where just as you fully understand a previous generation, you have to put it away to kind of surf forward on the tidal wave of technology that’s always moving."

That being said, Carmack added that he feels comfortable with the current technology, which is part of the reason he doesn't want to part with it. That's probably a very common feeling among game developers: The new hardware is all sorts of cool, but that means we have to start learning again. Yeah, well, we figure everyone benefits from that, right?

As for the PS3 and 360, I'm willing to bet the PS3 wasn't tapped out but the 360...? Yeah, that thing was done. Sorry, John.

No, he's bashed the PS3/360 in the past for not being up to snuff. The difference now is that he's working with Oculus VR, having left id. I suppose it has something to do with that meaning that he's no longer at the forefront of technical software creation so he could be more invested in the creative side of things? *shrugs*

the creative capacity to still push incredible games on PS3 and 360 hardware is absolutely still there. Basically, he's supporting the notion that devs can do something truly incredible even on the aging hardware, something that goes well beyond more power and memory.

sure sure john, so im assuming thats why RAGE looked like a frigging ps2 game!?ran like one too, even to this day im still getting massive frame rate stutters and other performance crap!and dont blame the drivers, on launch fine, but this late in the game?seriously?its a shame id tech has always brought the future of the industry to the present, but ever since doom 3 came out ids gone down the crapper!it was funny watching the video IGN did yesterday, to celebrate dooms anniversary they played the first chapter with john romero, the games lead designer.shameful how ahead of its time that was, and you look back to rage and just say really?for shame.......

so glad to see carmack move onto oculus where his interest clearly lies.i just hope he can knock some sense into those idiots and get them to put in a little more tech into the consumer version!such a shame to see such lauded amazing technology be sniffed at because they want to produce a product everyone can buy.300 bucks for a VR kit is just ridclious, you dont see ferrari proving the stereotype that all hybrid cars are slow ugly PoS, by using the cheapest technology possible now do you?you dont show the world the new amazing capabilities of flexible OLED screens by cheeping out now do you?im just worried that the consumer versions going to come out, and people are going to say see this is why i dident believe the hype, this is sh*t!i said id believe it when i see it, and yup as usual VR tech is still not ready.well, actually, no, it IS ready, but oculus want to sell out and create a every mans device, rather than create a premium device that will show the best of the technology.

one thing i hate about society these days.things use to be done to the best possible.it was lets put a man on the moon, not lets put a stuffed toy on the moon!it use to be lets bring out new technology and show it at the best it can be and to hell with the difficulty or expense of that!now its lets bring this new technology out, but as cheaply as it can so everyone can buy it and to hell with how that will hurt the technology.look what happened to 3D, every single movie was releasing in 3D last year.now your lucky to get 1 every few months!thats whats going to happen to oculus, to VR, unless they wake the f*ck up, and bring the best possible experience to the system.OLED mobile displays do exist, QHD mobile displays do exist, but were going to be stuck with a crappy 1080P LCD display because oculus wants to create a every mans device, instead of releasing a amazing QHD display that the technology so clearly NEEDS!your already cutting the resolution in half because there using a single display, so technically the displays not even HD!and PC gamers are suppose to go from playing at 2560x1600, or even 4K, to play at SUB HD!?yea, good luck with that!!!!!!!

out in the open it looked ok, not great.but once you get indoors it was a f*cking nightmare!even the fog enlisted to create atmosphere made the game look really washed out, and gave the whole game a bluey haze.you look at doom back when it released, and rage when it released, you wont believe they were made by the same company!john was making PCs sing to the moon back then, now id cant even compete with other MP developers out there, let alone first party teams!

Nonsense. I got both the PC and the PS3 version. Rage looked stunning.

Relatively speaking the PS3 version is the most impressive simply due to the hardware it runs on. On PC there's a bit tougher competition graphicwise but they both looks great on each their platforms.You just needed a fast hard drive to fully enjoy it.

Geobaldi;I don't get it. Not that great to look at?I now presume you talk about the PC version and although the game were notably more impressive on the PS3 I still gotta say it looked great also on PC. What do you compare it with?

if you think rage looked great on the PC, then you seriously need to play more PC games!RAGE was a f*cking mess on release, and STILL is!the texture mods helped a little, but if you want to talk texture mods doom 3 with wulfens 2.0 texture mod and the sikkmod, now thats a texture mod!pretty pathetic when a, what, 8 year old game and engine, is upshowing a brand new game and engine.megatexturing my a$$!john poured the whole development budget into that so he could have the massive draw distances in the console versions, and the close up textures and effects suffered because of it.

Ok so now we at least have settled that you talk about the PC version and not the PS3 version. World is obviously talking about the PS3 version, so you should just as obviously have stated that you talk about a different version on a different platform.

But to the next question I've asked: What PC games are you comparing it with? What games on PC are looking so insanely much better?

I don't have a lot of recent PC games, but of the ones I do have I can only say I think Crysis 3 looks significantly better - but even in that comparison Rage has the upper hand on some areas, like animation and especially facial expressions. The change of facial expressions are RARE in games today, usually they are rock faces. And for a shooter Rage does that extraordinary well. Rage really is in a league of it's own there.

And the outdoor scenes are *marvellous* in that game. Another area that sets RAGE significantly ahead of *most* competitors. To call this a mess is just absurd.Last edited by Beamboom on 12/14/2013 9:28:50 AM

One thing one need to realize in these kind of discussions is that this is primarily a question of how to spend resources. Pure cost.

If the old home computers of the 80s were still in business today I can guarantee you all that the stuff we would be able to do on those machines now would be next to unimaginable back then. So the Commodore fanboys of yesteryear are - to a certain extent - right in saying that "oh there's still plenty untapped potential in the good ole Amiga 500!".

But the cost (in terms of time and money) of optimizing and optimizing and optimizing the optimizers becomes so ridiculously high that it more and more becomes a pure waste of time.

And especially if the quality of the output is QUADRUPLED after just a fragment of time if working on newer hardware instead, it becomes meaningless from any other point of view than educational or experimental purposes. That is the entire point.